Last night's statement from Irish soccer international Kevin Doyle announcing that he has hung up his boots after suffering two concussions during the current MLS season highlighted the issue of head injuries in top level sports.
Micky Collins PhD, executive director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center sports concussion programme joined Off The Ball to discuss future of concussion assessment and treatment.
He believes that when tackling this topic it is important to understand that there are six primary concussion symptoms and that there are different kinds of concussions, which have their own treatments:
"If parents understood that there are treatments if parents understood that there are active treatments, if parents understood that we have tools to measure this injury we actually can do a pretty good job of understanding prognosis and how long it's going to take to recover."
"You know I'd like this injury to get to a point where we could sit a parent down and say, 'Hey, your child has had a concussion, this is the type of concussion they have and this is the rehab we are going to do in an active and targeted way. These are the tools we are going to use to measure the outcomes and we're going to get them better and get them back to play safely,'" he told OTB.
He spoke to us ahead of his talk at the GAA's second Concussion Symposium which will take place in Croke Park on October 7th.
There is also a growing body of research which shows that pulling players from games can dramatically reduce recovery time:
"The point I'm trying to make here is that the injury can be very subtle. It is not often times picked up in these sideline examinations. Athletes need to be understanding that if they continue to play through these symptoms it works against them in their [injury] outcomes.
"Really that's where we run into the most difficulty with this injury is when kids continue to play through injuries," he added, noting that teams should live by the motto, "when in doubt, sit them out."
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